Volunteers make Kids Voting work

If Kids Voting Lubbock County is declared a success in the next couple of weeks, Lisa Graf and her Junior League friends will be among the hundreds of reasons the new program got off the ground.

The Junior Leaguers are part of the coalition of teachers, parents, students and other community members whose volunteer hours have fueled the local version of a national civics education program tied to the election process. Some 50,000 students from Lubbock County schools will have an opportunity to cast ballots  choosing from among the same candidates as those featured on adult ballots  at polling sites near the official adult sites.

"They just really needed us," Graf said this week during a break in manning an early voting poll location. "The Junior League is really there for the community when they need us, and that's what they needed."

Teri Holmes, Kids Voting Lubbock County director, estimates that more than 600 people volunteered time to the project.

"It absolutely would not have happened without them," Holmes said.

The majority of those volunteers helped at the polls during early voting, which ended Friday, or will help on Election Day. The six early voting locations needed, on average, 40 volunteers. On Tuesday, between six and 10 volunteers will work at each of the 60 polling places.

The Junior League provisional class worked two early voting locations as part of its group project.

"We can choose anything we want to do," Graf said. "Most of us have kids and a lot of us are teachers. We thought this was a great thing to do."

Many of the volunteers come from parent-teacher groups at schools where voting will be held. Service organizations, university and high school students and church members are helping out as well.

Graf is a first-grade teacher at Preston Smith Elementary School and has seen the project from both sides  helping educate youngsters through the Kids Voting civics materials and assisting them through the voting process.

"I think it's a great project," she said. "I think it's been really good to teach the kids about their rights as a voter and a U.S. citizen. It is making the younger kids more aware. The whole idea behind Kids Voting is, hopefully, by the time they're 18 years old they're going to get out and vote."

The volunteers have stayed busy at most locations. Nearly 200 youngsters voted early during a five-hour span one day last week at Graf's location. That didn't bother the volunteers. The volunteers worked in the evenings during weekdays and longer hours on weekends, but Graf couldn't come up with a downside.

"If there is, it's maybe putting up the table," she said. "That's about it. I think it's been great."